Ungracious Guests: When friends leave your place a mess

Q: Last year, we let some friends use our beach house-but they ate everything in sight and left the place a mess! They’ve asked for a weekend this year. Can we say no without hurting the friendship?

A: You have every right to ban these sloppy folks from using your home. Be diplomatic and it won’t be a friendship-ender. Politely say “We’re not able to have people at our place this year, but we can give you the number of a nice B&B nearby. This approach won’t single them out, buy they’ll get the hint and maybe think twice about their manners.

2 Comments

I would tell them no – without accusing them directly, I would say that the reason why you are not letting anyone use it anymore is you rented it out a lot last year and some of the people who you let use it left it a total mess and it costs too much to clean up after everyone and replace all the food.